


A Call to Architecture

by Hoborg



Category: In Nomine
Genre: Alternate Ending, Multi, Non-Canonical Superior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 14:34:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoborg/pseuds/Hoborg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is an alternate ending for <i><a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/902924/">Waking Up</a></i>.  You should read that first.  The scene is the same as in the last chapter of that work.</p>
    </blockquote>





	A Call to Architecture

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Waking Up](https://archiveofourown.org/works/902924) by [fadeverb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb). 



> This is an alternate ending for _[Waking Up](http://archiveofourown.org/works/902924/)_. You should read that first. The scene is the same as in the last chapter of that work.

There’s a bank of old pay phones at the edge of the terminal, graffiti-covered and battered. But as I walk up to them, someone steps around the far side of the building and into view. A woman I don’t recognize, but — only two beings have ever looked at me with that gaze.

Belial. And Michael.

“Dread Prince.” My mouth is treacherous, but the woman laughs, and there’s no malice in it at all. Almost as if she truly were amused.

“No demon, I,” she says. “Nor angel, nor ethereal—and neither am I Lilith, Lucifer, or God. I mean you no harm, and I swear by the Symphony itself that you will walk away from this conversation unchanged, should you so choose.”

A peculiar list, that. Excluding every credible and incredible possibility and leaving only the most absurd.

“You can’t expect me to believe you’re—” I blurt, and she cuts me off.

“Speculate all you want, but not out loud,” she says, “nearly everyone thinks I’m a long-gone chapter of history, and that suits my purpose.”

I didn’t think it was possible for her to get even higher on the list of people I didn’t want to meet, and yet, here we are.

But I am still alive, which means she must want something of me. It can’t hurt to ask. Can it?

“What do you want?”

“I’ll get to that.” She walks closer. She’s wearing the kind of clothes everyone wears in this part of the country. She is, in fact, perfectly forgettable, as long as you don’t meet her eyes.

“The Demon Prince of Theft has noticed your recent, hm, unsolicited freelance efforts in furtherance of his Word. He is not displeased with what you did, but he cannot overlook it, lest he hand the Game an excuse to pick on his _official_ Servitors. Therefore, he means to make you a job offer you can’t refuse.”

Well, I suppose I could do worse.

“As Demon Princes go, you could do a lot worse,” she says, “but still, I thought you might appreciate an alternative.”

“This is the part where you try to convince me it’s better in Heaven?”

“I told you, I’m not an angel,” she says. “Which isn’t to say I couldn’t make you into an Ofanite, if that’s what you wanted, but I don’t think it is.”

“It’s not like anyone _else_ cares what I want,” I say. “But no, if that’s what you’re offering I’ll take my chances with Valefor.”

“No. And I’m not inviting you to enter my service in the official, binding, Hearts and dissonance conditions sort of way, even. What I have for you is a Role. You were an architect, weren’t you, before you declined that transfer to the War? And again, in the Marches.”

I can’t help but snort. ‘Declined a transfer,’ as if it could ever be that simple in Hell. “I don’t see how a Role’s going to stop a Demon Prince if he wants to find me.”

“This is one of my special tricks,” she says. “I am finite, I cannot make an absolute guarantee, but I can tell you that no one short of God Itself has yet been able to unmask a Role I created—and if someone does find a way, I will know it, and I will come to your aid.”

Might as well roll with it.

“That’s an impressive trick. What do _you_ get out of it, then?”

“I need someone to fill this Role. No more, no less. There’s a town that needs an architect. It’s quiet, politically stable, has no Tethers to my knowledge, in fact has received hardly any celestial attention in decades. I _will_ expect you not to design firetraps.”

Was that a _joke_?

“There’s always a catch.”

She shrugs. “I wouldn’t call it that, but there _is_ a detail you should know before you decide. I don’t do this to be cruel or ironic or anything, it’s a consequence of making the Role airtight: your vessel will age and die as humans do, and for its lifetime you won’t have the use of any of your demonic abilities, and you won’t remember you are anything but human.”

Well.

“I have to say, that doesn’t exactly appeal.”

“If it makes a difference, my way you get to keep Katherine,” she adds. “I don’t see that working out the other way. Not with those dissonance conditions.”

_Well._

“It all comes back after the vessel dies?”

“Just so.”

“And then?”

“If you want another job at that point, I’m sure I will have something, but if not, you can walk away. It will have been long enough that your various celestial entanglements have no reason to think you’re still alive.”

“Can the vessel be taller, and less conspicuous?”

She smiles a tiny bit. “Imagine your desired appearance as you would in the Marches, and I’ll build to match. —Within normal range of variation for humans, mind.”

Well, then.

I stick out my hand.

“I believe I will take this alternative of yours, er—”

She actually _grins_ at me as she ignores the implied question and takes the offered hand, just like two traders in a marketplace might. “Then we have a deal.”


End file.
